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It’s the Client’s Perception That Counts
Look at your firm through their eyes.
By Martin Bissett
Business Development On a Budget
There used to be an old exercise used in training sessions about customer relations or selling or leadership that went like this. The trainer would ask the group to think about the color green. A few seconds later he would ask them what type of green they were thinking of, and of course there would be many variations of green.
The point is that, as the saying goes, perception is reality. Whatever each person perceived as green, that would be the reality for them – but it would be different for each person in the room.
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Hannah Hood and Joey Kinney: Your Accounting Career Starts Before Your First Job Offer | Accounting Conversations
Practical experience, thoughtful questions, and strong communication help students build careers that reach beyond the classroom.
Sponsored by Radical Pricing by the Radical CPA, Jody Padar | See Today’s Special Offer
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Accounting Conversations
With Chayton Farlee
Center for Accounting Transformation
A perfect GPA can open a door. It cannot explain a client’s financial story, replace practical experience, or demonstrate how someone responds when there is no answer key.
For accounting students eager to distinguish themselves, that difference matters.
On Accounting Conversations, host Chayton Farlee welcomes Hannah Hood and Joey Kinney, co-hosts of The Young CPA Success Show, for a candid discussion about preparing for an accounting career. Drawing on their work in virtual CFO services with Summit Virtual CFO by Anders, the guests challenge students to look beyond familiar recruiting paths and consider what makes an accountant valuable to the people they serve.
MORE Center for Accounting Transformation | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network
Their advice starts with a seemingly modest assignment: Get close to the books.
Students may picture their future in consulting, financial leadership, audit, or tax. Hood and Kinney argue that those ambitions make understanding everyday accounting more essential. READ MORE →
Loyalty Tax: Accounting’s Lose-Lose Incentive System | Big 4 Transparency
Employees lose stability and firms lose money. So why do we do it?
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer
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Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines
A growing body of compensation data suggests that accounting firms may be unintentionally penalizing their most loyal employees.
In a recent solo episode of the Big 4 Transparency, founder Dominic Piscopo unpacks what he calls the “loyalty tax” — the pay gap between internally promoted employees and externally hired peers performing the same role. Drawing on 2024–2025 compensation data from thousands of U.S. and Canadian professionals, Piscopo outlines how this structural imbalance is reshaping career incentives across the profession.
MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE Private Equity | MORE Pay & Compensation
The loyalty tax, as defined in the episode, is the percentage difference in pay where externally hired employees earn more than internally promoted employees at the same level. According to the data, that gap is far from trivial. In the U.S., first-year senior associates hired externally earn roughly 6.3% more than internally promoted seniors, while first-year managers see an 8.9% premium. Even at the senior manager level, the gap persists. Canadian data shows a similar pattern, with especially pronounced spreads at the senior and senior manager levels.
The disparity is even more striking in consulting and advisory roles.
CPA PE Deal Tracker™: The Next Deal Cycle Comes into View
By CPA Trendlines Research
Wall Street’s buying spree for accounting firms is cooling going into the fourth quarter of 2026, according to the CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™, as platform firms digest a two-year surge of acquisitions and the earliest investors, from three to five years ago, begin to cash out.
MORE Private Equity: Michael Hoover: Growth Without Discipline Comes at a Cost | Big 4 Transparency | CBIZ Told Grant Thornton No, No, No, Before Saying Yes | PE Already Knows Your Price. Do You? | How Private Equity Turns CPA Loyalty into Legal Risk | Ira Rosenbloom: PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | The Disruptors | Allan Koltin: What Elite CPA Firms Do Differently | Gear Up for Growth
The October 2026 edition of the CPA PE Deal Tracker™ shows accounting’s private-equity deal flow easing in the third quarter, with 37 acquisitions in the U.S. and Canada, down from 42 a year earlier and a far cry from this year’s first-quarter surge of 58. The Tracker now counts 400 such deals in the U.S. and Canada since its records began in December 2016, plus 87 it has found elsewhere, for 487 worldwide, although its coverage outside North America is not systematic.
Use Smart Compensation to Drive Partner Performance
Five management objectives to address.
By Domenick J. Esposito
8 Steps to Great
“Show me your compensation plan and I’ll show you your strategy.” – Dom Esposito
As you strive to become a mid-market sustainable brand, your firm needs to become a performance-driven organization if you want to take advantage of future opportunities and drive growth and profitability. An effective performance management and compensation plan (PMCP) is critical to making your firm’s strategic plan a reality.
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The basic premise is that compensation rewards first look to:
- how successful the entire firm is,